re: J.K. Rowling and “sex is real”
There are a lot of people who are better educated than me and better able to explain the transphobia of the situation and the statement, but I’m gonna do what I do best and focus on the Science. “Why am I qualified?”, you may ask. Well, I am 6 months off a degree in genetics, so I may not be an expert, but I’m know I’m more knowledgeable than most on this subject. Such, here is the fallacy of the statement “sex is real”, from a scientific and genetic background.
Main idea: sex-determination and the presentation of both primary and secondary sex-characteristics is complicated, convoluted, and there are so many different factors trying to account for each and every one is nearly impossible. Trying to say that ‘sex’ is an irrefutable fact is simply inaccurate, because sometimes things are not what they seem at first glance.
Note: I shall be using male and female to refer to biologically male and biologically female individuals (as we do in scientific work), but these are just labels being used for clarity in this explanation.
When we talk about sex (not that kind), we are really talking about two different things: primary sex characteristics (testes and/or ovaries, & all the associated hardware), as well as secondary sex characteristics (breasts, hair growth, voice differences, differences in muscle mass/tone, etc., it’s a very long list). It is very important to make the distinction between these groups of characteristics because they develop differently.
Primary sex characteristics are determined during embryonic development. Specifically, the presence or absence of certain genes indicate to the developing cells to form a male reproductive system (testes & co.), or a female reproductive system (ovary & co.). If you took a middle school biology class, you probably learned that males usually have a XY genotype (one X and one Y chromosome), while females are typically XX with two X chromosomes. TYPICALLY is the key. When you begin to investigate this, you find that sex determination in developing embryos is so much more nuanced than XX or XY.
First, you can have non-disjunction events during meiosis, which results in eggs and sperm with either no sex chromosomes or else two. If these gametes are then used in fertilization, you can produce an embryo with either only one sex chromosome (from the other parent), or three (two from Parent1 and one from Parent2). An embryo with only a Y chromosome is non-viable, because the X chromosome contains other important genes, not just sex-determining one, but X, XXX, XXY, XYY, and many other (more) uncommon genotypes are all viable (meaning develop successfully into healthy babies), but have varying degrees of fertility and variances in the presentation of sex characteristics. Often, a child has no idea they are "unusual" until they get older and have genetic testing done for some reason, such as if they are having trouble conceiving with a partner. I would like to take a moment here to say that anyone who tries to say that these genotypes and chromosomal changes are ‘unnatural’ will personally catch these hands.
BUT, you can also have XX or XY individuals who are sex-reversed due to variations in gene expressions and levels. For example, the sex-determining region Y (SRY) is a gene found on the Y chromosome; it functions to activate all the necessary genes related to normal male-development. One gene it activates is the SOX9 gene, located on chromosome 17. Why is this important? Because every person who has two copies of chromosome 17 therefore has two copies of the SOX9 gene regardless of sex, and if one of these genes gets activated for some reason when they shouldn’t, a XX individual can develop male primary sex characteristics, i.e. a penis and testes (though they are typically infertile); in sciencey terms we call this 'female-to-male sex reversal'. And guess what? 'Male-to-female' sex reversal also occurs! The DAX1 gene (the actual name of which is very long), typically inhibits SOX9 (a "male gene") in XX individuals. (DAX1 conversely gets inhibited in females but that’s a different, much more complicated thing to talk about so I’m not going to go there right now.) So guess what happens in a duplication leads to an XY individual with multiple copies of the DAX1 gene? That’s right! They can develop those pesky female primary sex characteristics! Are you confused? No worries, gene interactions are complicated, that’s why we have scientists who specifically are investigating it. Also, I only mentioned a few examples here. There are quite literally a whole ton of different genes and pathways involved in sex-determination, and pretty much every single one of them can get messed up in one way or another. And guess what? We’re only talking about humans in this post.
NEXT: Secondary sex characteristics are determined by your hormones, and appear during puberty (yay). When an individual produces more testosterone than estrogen, they will show more male secondary sex characteristics, and vice-versa. Note: there are more hormones involved than just estrogen & testosterone, but there are considered the two most important and therefore used in this example. Again, there are a million different ways that the hormone-producing pathways of the human body can be influenced by external factors, and these all can result in variations in hormone levels in the body and within each cell. For example, hormone levels naturally vary (think menstrual cycle or as a person ages), and the body will change as these fluctuations occur, both in internal and external ways. This is why hormone replacement therapy can be used to alter the secondary sex characteristics on an individual to match their gender, because the human body is just a huge ball of pathways and regulatory systems that we are slowly learning how to influence. The primary sex organs are regulated by hormones (such as controlling a menstrual cycle), but their presence is not tied to their development, instead the development of gonads affects what an individual's baseline hormone levels are. The only way that the primary sex organs can be altered is surgically, but there is no way to convert, for example, testes into a ovaries (as of 12/19/2019 lol).
So what’s my point with all of this fun science? I wanted y’all to suffer.
Okay no I didn’t, I think this stuff is freaking cool and it blows my mind whenever I think about it. My point is that the statement ‘sex is real’ implies that sex is an irrefutable fact that never waivers, and that’s simply not true from a scientific standpoint. Even defining three sexes (male, female, and intersex, for everything in between) leaves out the wide variety of presentations that can occur. Is it a chromosomal abnormality? Fluctuations in gene expression that changes the primary sex characteristic? Hormonal abnormality? You cannot tell by looking at a person, and unless you are their doctor, it is really none of your business anyway. By insisting that a person’s sex has any influence on the person they are, Rowling is showing her bais against anyone who doesn’t fit into the what she considers to be male or female. But as we now know, XX and XY cannot be used as the end all, be all of sex, and Rowling, like so many people, needs to learn to be better.
If anything is confusing or you want to ask more questions, feel free to slide into my DMs. I love talking about science (lol).
